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Welcome to CycloneFanatic.com. I notice you haven't taken the time to register yet, now is as good of time as any:)

To put this perspective, UNM has never "paid" any where near this kind of money for a "coach"? The Lobo nation is a twisted, distorted mess......they since December have demanded McKay to be fired, then they (Bobby Knight and new UNM Pres) hire their buddy "Alfraud". To make matters worse he calls EIU recurits and talks about going to New Mexico!

Having lived in Indiana for several years it is my considered opinion that the University of New Mexico could not have selected a better coach.
He is fundamentally sound, having been raised in a great basketball town (Newcastle) by a great basketball coach (his father). After high school he starred at Indiana under Bob Knight, one of basketball's premier coaches. He will bring honor to the program.

I wish you could find other things for Rick Wright to do than his pathetic attempts to write for the sports department.
His unreasonable hatred for Bob Knight colors everything he does.
DONALD BICE
Los Lunas

Good Riddance to Bad Coach
WHEN STEVE ALFORD first came to coach men's basketball at the University of Iowa eight years ago, many held hope that he would accelerate the basketball program to a new level. Over the course of the next eight years we watched as Iowa basketball deteriorated into a second-class program.
Attendance fell off for the games in an arena where tickets were once in high demand. A program that had made nearly annual trips to the NCAA tournament now played the NIT— or like this year, no post season tournament at all. Even when the team did make the NCAA tournament, which was only three times in the last eight years, they only won one game.
We had plenty of player defections over those eight years. We also had several players who became academically ineligible. We even had a scandal involving a player who was criminally prosecuted for his aberrant behavior.
Then there was the coach himself. There was an arrogance that accompanied Alford. A pugnacious unsociability that alienated him from the good-natured people of Iowa. Obviously these are not the symptoms of a healthy program.
Folks awaiting Iowa basketball re-emergence as a perennial top 20 program suffered through years of disappointing mediocrity. Seasons of mediocrity rewarded with pay increases and contract extensions.
Indeed, Alford took the Iowa basketball program to a new level. He dug us into a big hole that we now have to try to climb back out of again. We're much worse off now than before his arrival.
The good people of New Mexico might be excited about the future with your new coach, and we certainly wish you well, but you should know that 90 percent of the people of Iowa are very glad to see this guy leave.
CHARLIE HOGUE
Cedar Rapids, IowaSalary Skews Priorities

AS TUITION continues to rise and students and professors struggle to make ends meet, the University of New Mexico sees fit to pay the new men's basketball coach close to one million dollars. How disgraceful!
Where are our priorities? Has anyone checked the salary of UNM professors lately including the ongoing struggle of our part-time professors who receive few, if any, benefits?
The men's team has produced several players who have no regard for UNM rules or the laws of our society. The approximate rate of male athletes who graduate from the University is under 10 percent. This is a sign of failure.
With accountability being the buzzword of the decade, I see little being achieved. How many student athletes do you think will actually go on to play professional sports? Have we provided them with the learning and life skills that they will need to succeed outside of the sports arena? I think not.
Coach Don Flanagan, the women's basketball coach, continues to produce a team whose members consistently meet high academic performance as well as conference championships and NCAA tournament appearances for a fraction of the men's coach salary. Does this really make sense to you? What about the track, baseball, volleyball, softball, tennis, gymnastics, skiing and other coaches and athletes— are they not equally as important?
I enjoy our school's sports and feel the programs are an important part of campus life. I also feel that these sports programs should provide students with lessons in leadership and responsibility, gearing them for successful futures.
Isn't this what education is about? Preparing students to become productive citizens and make sensible choices in their lives that will better both their own lives and the lives of those around them is imperative.
If these lessons are not being taught or respected, we will continue to produce uneducated people who think they can get what they want by the use of unworthy means who in turn act as poor role models for our students and community. Is this the message that UNM is comfortable in portraying? ...
GERRI BARNHART
Albuquerque

UNM Deserved Real Search

UNM WOULD BE better served if it took upon itself the responsibility of searching for a basketball coach. Contracting a smoke-and-mirrors head-hunter firm for the tidy sum of $30,000 to find candidates in this "information age" says little for the trust typically placed in those of the administration who should shoulder that responsibility.
Nothing in the social milieu of this country— save politics and Anna Nicole Smith— are more documented, examined and discussed than sports. Nothing escapes scrutiny. The Internet expands and accelerates the process. A few taps on the keyboard and one can retrieve almost anything there is to know about college coaches.
If you're old-fashioned, pick up the phone and call the former president at Iowa, also a former vice president for academic affairs at UNM and currently the president at Michigan, to ask her recommendation. Confidentiality can be a challenge. One must be very thorough. But the process is not complicated.
When the tide of criticism rises for hiring a coach from an institution that was trying to unload him, our steadfast defense is that he was the best the head hunters could recommend. Does not the fee validate the choice? No, not really.
But what that $30,000 could have brought to UNM otherwise— a freshman National Merit Scholarship winner or two track-and-field scholarship equivalences.
GARY NESS, former UNM athletic director
Albuquerque

Salary Promises Disaster
$975,000? TALK ABOUT putting a cart before a questionable horse. This has disaster written all over the wall. So the saying goes, "You all made this bed, I hope you can lie in it."
MIKE HUCKINS
Albuquerque

What About Nurses, Cops?

I'M DIZZY AND gaga with the excitement over a basketball coach making close to a million bucks a year. Wonder what the university staff is muttering under its breath.
How about the nurses at UNM Hospital taking care of preemies 24 hours a day? They deserve an annual salary of a million bucks. How about the fireman/policeman going about their daily routine of saving lives as well?
Mommies and daddies forget about spending big bucks for 10 years making your child a doctor. Go for the gold and make him or her a basketball coach that fails after a few years and gets a nice buyout package. An so it goes.
JOHN DAVIS
Albuquerque
High Salary Is Obscene
AFTER READING and following the stories on the hiring of Steve Alford as UNM men's basketball coach, one word comes to mind— OBSCENE!
LEE M. TOMLIN
Albuquerque

Put Money in Education

THE HEADLINE in the Journal was lamenting the fact that the state's largest university has only a few scholarships available for scholars, while many other universities have almost unlimited scholarships available.
This would be a disturbing story under any circumstances, but following the announcement by the same university of the hiring of a million-dollar-a-year basketball coach it really drives home how far our educational institutions have digressed from their mission of education. As a New Mexican whose taxes help finance the state university, I am outraged.
Every night we are bombarded by news of the latest college sports events. Some networks have practically excluded any programming except sports during playoffs. Yet you can count on one hand the number of stories in the news about academic excellence that I have seen in the past month. Little wonder that the educational system in this country is lagging behind the rest of the world and that our children drop out of school at an alarming rate.
Just the salary of the new coach alone would provide 80, $12,500-per-year academic scholarships. The money spent on equipping and shipping the sports teams around the country would finance a center for science that would attract the best and brightest to our state. That, in turn, would encourage industries to set up facilities nearby.
The resulting economic boom could allow us to finance professional sports teams so that those who wish to cheer a local team can do so without cluttering the educational system with such clearly non-academic pursuits.
I do not think that the legislators that founded the state university system would have approved it if they realized it was going to turn into a farm system for the NBA. We might as well have a school for rock music and acting with million-dollar coaches. Our children have as much of a chance to become employed as musicians or movie actors as sports stars, and they get even more press than the sports stars— if that is what is important.
Making a game-winning play is a lot more glamorous in the short run than curing cancer or developing the next generation of computers, but 10 years from now a lot more people will be positively affected by the latter.
Having the No. 1 college team might bring a few million dollars in TV revenues into the state while it lasts, but a top-notch university science department will bring in far more economic benefits over the long run. Let's invest in the long-term future of this state, not for the short-term glamour of a winning sports team.
MICHAEL WOLF
Albuquerque

The Decline of Civilization

IT WAS SAD to read that the basketball coach at UNM is to be paid more than the president. A lot of queer events are happening in our country. The question to be asked is if they are a sign of civilization decline. Examples abound.
While we have so many murders in our small city, our Congress fails to pass a gun-control law.
Our electoral system, with money being decisive, caused the election of an obviously unqualified presidential candidate. Then, despite what the Constitution requires, Congress allowed him to get us into a thoughtless war with no reason or even plan.
Getting back to coaches and players, scholarships are lavishly given to athletes despite their original intention— scholarly achievement.
Sports are interesting to many Americans, but they should not compete with education and even news broadcasts. Television networks frequently let a game of any sport replace news. That is but one factor in the dumbing down of our country.
MIGUEL ENCINIAS
Albuquerque

Protest Sports Worship
IF IT IS THE aim of UNM to offend the taxpaying public, it has certainly achieved its goal— again with the hiring of a new coach.
In the bad old days, it was the mission of public schools and universities to educate. That mission seems to have disappeared long ago. When is the public going to rise in protest against this insane worship of sports?
It was more than ironic that the Sunday Journal lamented the fact that UNM has only five scholarships for honor students. Clearly academic achievement has little, if any, priority.
Apparently the new president will gladly feed the Lobo trough rather than seek excellence in education.
RAY REEDER
Albuquerque

Through the Looking Glass
MARCH MADNESS is indeed upon us. In offering the new basketball coach a compensation package of nearly $1 million, the regents, the president and the athletic director of the University of New Mexico have stepped through the looking glass into an unreal world.
I can see them now, on the other side:
Around a bend of the Rio Grande
Is a cherry-and-silver Wonderland.
Here Mad Hatter Schmidly and March Hare Krebs,
White Rabbit Harris and Queen of Hearts Koch
Are sipping tea and making book on athletic conquests to come.
The kingdom behind them is falling apart:
The staff has no money, the library's broke,
Utilities crumble, and faculty flee.
But this concerns none of the powers that be
As much as a Lobo victory,
And paying execs at the top of the tree
The highest possible salary.
Beware the ides of March. The warped priorities of the Schmidly era are now clear. Athletics are the primary function of the University, and executive greed rules. I see a bad moon rising over UNM.
HUGH WITEMEYER, professor emiritus, UNM English Department

Re: New Mexico Lobo Nation and Alford

Originally Posted by loboclone

UNM Deserved Real Search

UNM WOULD BE better served if it took upon itself the responsibility of searching for a basketball coach. Contracting a smoke-and-mirrors head-hunter firm for the tidy sum of $30,000 to find candidates in this "information age" says little for the trust typically placed in those of the administration who should shoulder that responsibility.
Nothing in the social milieu of this country— save politics and Anna Nicole Smith— are more documented, examined and discussed than sports. Nothing escapes scrutiny. The Internet expands and accelerates the process. A few taps on the keyboard and one can retrieve almost anything there is to know about college coaches.
If you're old-fashioned, pick up the phone and call the former president at Iowa, also a former vice president for academic affairs at UNM and currently the president at Michigan, to ask her recommendation. Confidentiality can be a challenge. One must be very thorough. But the process is not complicated.
When the tide of criticism rises for hiring a coach from an institution that was trying to unload him, our steadfast defense is that he was the best the head hunters could recommend. Does not the fee validate the choice? No, not really.
But what that $30,000 could have brought to UNM otherwise— a freshman National Merit Scholarship winner or two track-and-field scholarship equivalences.GARY NESS, former UNM athletic director
Albuquerque

Did anyone else catch this? The former AD was one of the ppl that wrote a letter to the paper??? That is funny.

Could you imagine BVD writing an opinion letter on the state of the Cyclones right now?

Re: New Mexico Lobo Nation and Alford

"... but you should know that 90 percent of the people of Iowa are very glad to see this guy leave..." from the Cedar Rapids letter in the first post.

Wouldn't that imply that 90 percent of the people in Iowa are Hawkeye fans? Definitely not the case. He should've said '90 percent of Hawkeye fans are very glad to see this guy leave...' The other 10 percent are not aware that he's gone because it hasn't been in The Weekly Reader yet.

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